he or she is okay?”
“I love that you’re so responsible, but it’s not only about responsibility. It’s also about being present in my child’s life. What if one day you wake up and realize what you’re missing and decide you do want to be a father? Fine, I let you into our lives. But then maybe after a while you won’t be able to handle being a father anymore, or we can’t work out our problems, and then what? You don’t get to opt in and out when you feel like it. This is my child. I’m taking sole responsibility for it. I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m doing this because I want to protect my child’s emotional future.”
He stared at her. My child. How many times had she said those words in that little speech? Three, four? She was staking her claim. She hadn’t made the decision to raise the child by herself because he wasn’t stepping up. She was doing it because she really, truly wanted to raise the child without him.
The implications sank in. Even if he did want to be part of the baby’s life, she wouldn’t ever let him. He’d wanted it this way, so he had no right to feel hurt, or angry at her selfishness. But it was depressing, thinking she had to protect her child from him.
Grimly he nodded, acknowledging he had no choice but to accept her decree.
CHAPTER SIX
August, late winter
EMMA STEPPED OUT of her car in the hospital staff parking lot into the pouring rain. Damn. She’d forgotten her umbrella. Not only that, her shift started in five minutes and it took ten minutes to waddle to the back entrance and hike her swollen body up to Ward 5G North.
Head down, she set off between the rows of cars. She was always late these days. Late for class, late with her fifty-page term assignment and now late to work.
She was supposed to have gone on maternity leave a week ago but the geriatric ward was overflowing with an influx of pneumonia patients during these last days of winter. To top it off, Tracey was off work with a bad case of flu and another nurse was on annual leave, so Emma had volunteered to work a few extra days to cover the ward. The other nurses had made allowances for her through morning sickness and absences due to ultrasounds and other tests. She owed them.
But it had been hard getting up this morning. She’d spent a restless night, unable to get comfortable, plagued by Braxton Hicks contractions.
She tried to step over a puddle because it was too much trouble to go around it and missed. Cold water seeped into her shoe as she splashed down. Her stomach tightened so painfully she had to stop and pant through it. Damn Braxton Hicks. Three more weeks to her due date. The birth couldn’t come soon enough as far as she was concerned. She was a fat cow, and the baby had dropped and was pressing uncomfortably on her groin.
She’d barely started walking again when she had another contraction, sharper and tighter than before. She bent double, struggling to make sense of the spreading wet stain on her white stockings. Not blood. Rainwater? Oh, God. Amniotic fluid. This was it. It must be. Her water had just broken. Not Braxton Hicks but the real deal.
No! She couldn’t have the baby now. She still had that paper to write. She was supposed to be on duty.
“Stop it, Ivy. Don’t do this to me.” A hot flush sent heat into her chest and face. She stood there trembling, her legs spread wide for support.
What was she going to do? The parking lot was deserted, the hospital entrance still three hundred yards away. Another contraction hit. She bent over again and clasped her arms over her belly. Rain streamed down the back of her neck. Well, wasn’t this just bloody inconvenient? She had to stop it right now. She didn’t want to have this damn baby, after all.
“Excuse me, madam, do you need some help?”
Emma glanced up. A dark-skinned man with square black glasses touched her elbow. She recognized him. He was a urologist. “What does it look like? I’m having a fricking baby. But it’s not due yet and I’m not ready for it. If you could help me inside, I’m sure the doctors can stop it for me.” Why was he looking at her so strangely? Slowly and clearly she enunciated, “I’m. Not.